The present invention relates to paging preview displays used in interactive computer systems and, in particular, discloses an arrangement by which a user may conveniently tailor the page preview display to suit individual requirements.
Most computer-based applications which incorporate a tool for printing information in document form also provide a previewing facility that allows the user to view, usually on a video display device or the like, a representation of the page to be printed before it is actually output to the printer for hard copy reproduction. Such tools typically incorporate a preview area on the display screen that implements a xe2x80x9cWhat You See Is What You Getxe2x80x9d (WYSIWYG) printing interface. Within this area, a preview version of the page to be rendered is displayed and which corresponds to the intended printed page(s). The pages are usually previewed one or two at a time so that the user can view the fine details at screen resolution, which is typically 72 dpi compared to usual printers resolution of 300 dpi or better.
FIG. 1 shows a window 1 that may be typically encountered when using the WORD FOR WINDOWS (Trade Mark Microsoft Corporation) word processing software application. The window 1 is shown after the user has selected a xe2x80x9cprint previewxe2x80x9d function whereby two pages 2 and 3 of the document being produced are represented within a display area 4 in a side-by-side relationship. Microsoft Word also allows the user to switch between one page and two page print preview. FIG. 1 shows the print previews substantially filling the display area.
In some versions of Microsoft Word, for example Microsoft Word 97, the print preview display also provides the user with an array of zoom settings which are selectable by means of a drop-down sub-window 5 also seen in FIG. 1. Such applications permit the user to select one of a predetermined number of zoom ratios preset by the software application. For example, Word 97 offers the selectable ratios of 500%, 200%, 150%, 100%, 75%, 50%, 25%, 10%, xe2x80x9cpage widthxe2x80x9d, xe2x80x9cwhole pagexe2x80x9d, and xe2x80x9ctwo pagesxe2x80x9d. In the example indicated in FIG. 1, it is noted that selecting xe2x80x9ctwo pagesxe2x80x9d equates to a zoom ratio automatically of 37% as indicated. As a consequence, the user is often constrained within predetermined zoom ratios for print preview.
In some applications, the user may specify his own preview ratio. This requires specific data entry (typing) of the zoom ratio desired (eg. say, 17.5%) in the Word 97 example mentioned above. Whilst such print previewing may be accurately represented, it is difficult without some amount of trial and error for a user to accurately select a desired zoom ratio to achieve a desired transient reproduction.
Other computer applications provide alternatives and the most common alternative is the tiling of individual page previews within the preview area. This facilitates the display of as many pages as possible in a single viewing,. An example of this is seen in FIG. 2 where a particular small zoom ratio (eg. 10%) may be selected such that a number of pages 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11 appear tiled within the display area 4. Notably, and as seen in FIG. 2, not all pages are fully displayed (eg. pages 9, 10 and 11) in which case, a scroll bar 12 may be provided to permit the user to scroll through the electronic document as it is displayed within the window 4 to view the whole print preview for each of the partly shown or wholly obscured pages 9, 10 and 11. Again, the user is constrained to operate within a specified number of zoom ratios.
Further, a printing tool that prints a collection of documents as a single printout requires to address the user""s preferences with respect to the presentation of the overall collection, as well as each individual document. This is particularly important when the content of such documents can span multiple pages. Examples of this occur in hyper-text documents which may be generated using advanced word processing packages, and/or web-browsing document formatting packages. In such collections, the layout of individual documents is dictated by the pages boundaries and may be affected by its position within the collection.
It is also known to be able to select the boundaries of an application program window, such as the edge 13 of the window shown in FIG. 2 and to manipulate the size of the window by moving the edge. The same can also be accomplished by selecting a corner of a window. When this is a performed in a print preview mode, this may cause, where the window is enlarged, further pages to be previewed (eg. tiling), but where the window size is reduced, the preview can be become truncated and exceed the boundaries of the window and thus not be appropriately displayed. The user must then manually select an appropriate zoom setting, if indeed that feature is available.
Accordingly, there exists a need for an alternative means for creating a print preview which may be easily tailored by the user to provide a desired representation of the document at hand.
In accordance with one aspect of the present invention there is disclosed a method of altering the presentation of an image represented by a display, said method comprising the steps of:
establishing a matrix of display cells within each of which at least part of a visual object is displayable, each of said display cells having a first configuration in which at least part of one of said cells forms said image;
selecting a component at a first position within said matrix and forming part of said image and moving said component to a second position in said matrix;
determining from the movement of said component an extent of change of said first configuration; and
applying the extent of change to the display cells to alter their presentation to a second configuration.
In accordance with another aspect of the present invention there is disclosed a method of previewing an electronic document intended for printing, said method comprising the steps of:
providing an electronic document having at least one printable page;
creating a print preview representation of said one page and displaying the representation in a first format;
creating a boundary at an edge of said one page and displaying said boundary over said representation;
selecting a component of the representation and moving the component within the display to cause an alteration of said representation to a second format.
In accordance with another aspect of the present invention there is disclosed a method of previewing an electronic document using display device forming part of a computer system intended for printing, said method comprising the steps of:
(a) providing an electronic document having at least one printable page;
(b) forming a print preview representation of said one page at a default preview size;
(c) forming a grid associated with said representation and having cells corresponding to individual pages at said default preview size;
(d) displaying on said display device said representation and said grid with said grid overlying said representation;
(e) selecting using at least one input device of said computer system, a part of said grid and moving the selected part to cause a change in size of said grid such that an aspect ratio of said cells formed by said grid remains constant;
(f) de-selecting said grid and forming a further print preview representation of said one page at a preview size corresponding to that of said change in said grid.
In accordance with another aspect of the present invention there is disclosed
Other aspects of the invention, including apparatus for performing the invention and computer program products related to the same, are also disclosed.